OffsideChanceFormat2 (36 page)

“Why
do you think I shave my head during the season? To hide my true primate
ancestry, of course.”

“I
thought it was a case of lice or fleas or something. Or you thought the Mr.
Clean look was attractive.”

“So
you don’t subscribe to the ‘bald is beautiful’ notion when picking a date?”

“It’s
not something that’s come up before, no.” He wanted to laugh but the idea that
maybe this wasn’t supposed to be funny stayed at the back of his mind. “We
aren’t dating.”

“We
skipped that part, it seems, and went straight to the shacking up part. Does
this count as a common law union? Should I be worried about a break-up?”

And
that was the heart of this whole incredibly fucked up situation. Jude had
somehow let Levi convince him he was falling in love. And that maybe Will
returned the feeling. He couldn’t have been farther from the truth. “About what
happened earlier…”

“You’ll
have to be a little more specific about which event you are referencing, Jude,
because this has been one fucktastically fucked up day.” Will bounced the bed
as he rolled onto his side. Jude felt him looming over him, and eased his arm
above his head to rest on the bed.

“Right.
Yeah. Okay. Forget that I mentioned anything.” He linked his hands together above
his head to keep from fidgeting.

“You
mean when we kissed?”

Will
wasn’t making this easy. Jude opened his eyes to find the man propped on one elbow
staring down at him. His eyes were warm, almost… pretty. “Has anyone ever told
you how incredible your eyes are? I’ve never seen violet eyes before.”

“A
gift from my father. Purple fucking eyes bring the girls running. But I bet
you’ve had women say the same about your eyes. Especially when you’re all fired
up, they glow like flame lit whiskey. I have never seen anything like it.” Will
cupped Jude’s face with his free hand, dragging his thumb slowly over his
cheekbone. “They’re doing it right now.”

“Because
you’re looking at me like that,” Jude whispered. He lay relaxed, as if this was
the most natural place to be, on his back wishing Will would stop teasing him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like
what?” Will swiped his thumb over Jude’s lips, softly, the touch feather light.
“Maybe we should try that again. Without the adrenaline this time.”

“Try
what?” Jude’s mind wasn’t working quite as fast as his body. Will leaned over,
slowly, hesitantly, eyes open completely, creating a warm purple gaze that was
sucking Jude in. He angled his face, nose offset, and began to close the
distance between them. The first warning, well the whole bending over thing
should have been warning enough but they’d been this close several times
without ever taking that last crucial step, the caress of warm breath on his
lips…that would be the first warning that this was going to end up with him
confessing his sins and declaring feelings he didn’t want to feel. Will closed
his eyes as he dipped that final fraction of an inch. Jude followed his lead.

Eyes
closed, he waited, and received… Will brushed his lips, softly, with his,
placing a peck on Jude’s closed mouth. Not enough. Not nearly enough. He must
have gasped or made some kind of noise of protest because Will sighed and
started to pull away. But Jude wasn’t ready to let him give up. He lifted his
head, just a little, and returned the peck, this time brushing his tongue over
the slightly parted seam of Will’s mouth. He invited more, licked a warm
welcome that brought Will’s mouth back to his. A peck that Jude returned. Will
wrapped his hand behind Jude’s neck, thumb tracing his jawline and dipped in
for more. It became a full on open mouth kiss with breath mingling and tongues
teasing. On and on. Will caressed him with one calloused finger, his tongue
lightly delving into Jude’s mouth, lips parted, touching, licking. Kissing.
Fuck, Will could kiss. And Jude could stay like this forever. His body was
tingling with life and he craved more with each caressing touch of Will’s lips
to his.

“Fuck,”
Will growled, pulling away. He dragged his hand over Jude’s chest and fell onto
his back. “Fuck.”

Jude
didn’t know how to react. He lay still and stared at the plaster ceiling. There
was a crack spreading from the light fixture in a zigzag almost lightening
pattern toward the front window, a crack that hadn’t been there when he’d
occupied this room so many years ago. He concentrated on the crack and what
could have caused it instead of the kiss that had him ready to promise the man
the world for just another taste.

“Okay,
that’s it, fuck it,” Will announced, climbing to his knees and moving toward
the foot of the bed while Jude was still trying to remember how to work his
mouth. “Get up, get changed, we’re going out.”

 
“Out?” he asked as if the word were foreign to
his tongue. “What do you mean ‘out’?”

“I
mean out of this house. Out of this…this…away from this…disaster. Out for food.
A movie. I don’t care, just out. Or I’m going to rip your clothes off you and
fuck you into this mattress.” Will was on his feet and pulling off the long
sleeve Under Armor shirt that molded to his body like a second skin. His nylon
shorts followed shortly, leaving Will wearing only the body squeezing running
pants that showed every muscle and bulge… and Will was definitely bulging. “I
need to shower first. I probably stink.”

“Wait…
just wait,” Jude said, confused. He wanted to explore that second option, but
Will was already in the hall.

Will
stopped and turned back. “Dinner, Jude. I’m asking you out… you know… don’t
make me say the word.”

A
flicker of something hot shot through Jude. “Date,” he said finally in
recognition. “You’re asking me out on a date? Oh my god, Slayer—“

“Ten
minutes, Judy, wear something pretty. And don’t say that word again. We’re
going to dinner, maybe… a hotel.” He looked around at the debris and scowled.
“Two rooms.”

“One
room. One bed. Bring lube.” Jude crawled out of the bed.

Will
paled for a moment and swiped his hand through the brush of hair on top of his
head; it rippled but didn’t bend. “Yeah. One bed…ten minutes.”

Jude
waited until he heard the shower to pull his shirt up to inspect his wound. His
side throbbed. A trickle of blood escaped the bandage. Probably from Will’s
weight. He held the already bloody shirt against the area until the pain
stopped. He trudged through the broken furniture in Levi’s room and pulled out
clothes from the dresser he’d been using to store his things. Upon inspection,
he saw that his things were untouched. Just Levi’s more colorful clothes had
received the brunt of the man’s rage. Jude shook out a t-shirt and a pair of
jeans. Trying not to look around at the destruction, he waited until Will left
the bathroom and took his clothes in to change. While he was there, he checked
the wound again and applied a thicker gauze pad and taped up the area. He
downed six Advil and tried to do something with his hair. Will was right, he
needed a trim. And soon.

“Two
minutes,” Will shouted over the running water.

“Hold
your horses,” he shouted back, trying not to drip toothpaste foam onto his
clean shirt.

“I’m
starving. Let’s go.”

Jude
wasn’t hungry. But he had to get out of this house or lose his fucking mind
worrying about… He stopped the thought before it formed. “Three minutes,” he
called to Will with his mouth full of toothpaste. He spit and rinsed and hoped
like hell the pain pills would kick in soon or this was going to be the
shortest date in the history of dating. And he didn’t count the dates that
ended happily in the back seat of a car.

Chapter
Nineteen

“Why
is it every time I drop in, I find them
in
flagrante dilicto
?” Will heard Levi’s voice even in his troubled sleep. He
cracked an eyelid to find Levi leaning over him and Jude as they lay spooned
together in somebody’s bed.

 
“They are dressed this time, at least,” Tracy
said from the other side of room as Levi reached to prod Jude’s arm.

Will
intercepted his hand before he could wake him. “Don’t. He just went to sleep.”
Maybe he held Levi’s wrist a little tighter than he should or maybe he sounded
angrier than he meant to, but either way Will did something that caused Levi to
look at him as if he’d lost his damned mind.

“Just
don’t. Okay. Let him sleep.” Will eased away from Jude and pulled the blanket
over him. The man didn’t budge, but his breathing was even. His face was still
pale.

“What’s
going on?” Levi asked quietly as Will tried to get his bearings. He moved to a sitting
position where he hung his legs off the side of the bed and scrubbed his face
with both hands. Will should have been sleeping as well, but Jude definitely
deserved it more after being rushed to the emergency room after scaring the
shit out of a bar full of people.

“What
time is it?” Will asked, dazed. All he knew was it was too fucking early for
this shit.

“Eight.
What’s wrong with Jude?” Levi responded, his protective instincts kicking in.

Fucking
hell!
“He passed out at Rascals while we
were playing pool. Fucker is a fucking hustler. Had these guys buying his
innocent geek boy routine, too. We spent the night in the ER getting him all
stitched up.”

“Stitches
for what? What happened at Rascals?” Levi’s protective instincts turned to full
blown mother hen mode now.

“Aaron stabbed him.
Fuck, Levi, he told you this on the phone last night. It was worse than we
thought. But still not that bad. He needs sleep and not to rip his stitches
open.” Will still hadn’t looked past his own hands. God, he wanted to climb
back into bed and sleep for a week, but with Levi here and going into full-on
diva mode, that wasn’t going to happen.

“Fuck
did you say? Aaron did what?” Levi shrieked at Will, who finally took his face
out of his hands just as Tracy clamped a hand over his lover’s mouth and
started backing him out of the room.

“Oh,
fuck, he didn’t tell you that part did he?” Will looked around for his
discarded jeans and pulled them on over his briefs. He checked the floor for
broken glass or pottery fragments before following them barefoot into the hall.
“Of course he didn’t. I mean, why would he tell you something like that when he
didn’t want to even go to the ER to have it looked at in the first place?”

“So
you took him out to Rascals for pool and beers instead of the ER? That makes
sense,” Levi shouted, but Will shushed him while he paced. “What the hell was
Aaron doing in the house anyway? I thought he went back to Miami.”

“I
told you he wouldn’t. I told you he’d come back for more money. He doesn’t give
a shit about anything or anyone anymore. Just the drugs. That’s all he lives
for. He would fuck his grandmother over for a gram, if he had a grandmother,
which thankfully he doesn’t.” Will did his best to herd them to the stairs
instead of letting Levi carry on in what was left of his room. It was too
fucking early to listen to him bitch. “Why are you even here?”

“Did
you think he wouldn’t come?” Tracy asked, seeming to understand what Will was doing,
and together they managed to get Levi downstairs and into the kitchen. “As it
is, I had a hell of a time getting him to wait until morning.”

“Yeah,
I guess I didn’t think… They are Levi’s things, not mine. Fucker just burnt my fucking
house down, it’s not like I understand. Fuck, Levi, I’m sorry. I’m just… this
has me messed up. I came in to find my fucking cousin holding my… holding Jude
hostage. I didn’t think he’d go that far. I never thought he was that bad off.”
Will all but collapsed into a chair while Tracy went to the coffee maker. “I
keep seeing it. All of it. When I close my eyes, he’s ranting about the rings
and then he’s sticking Jude in the side with the god damned butcher knife… except
in my dreams it’s worse than it is. In my dreams… Well, it doesn’t matter.
Anyway, he climbed to the second floor and jimmied the balcony doors open,
that’s how he got in. We weren’t here. I hate thinking what would have happened
if Jude was here alone when he first broke in.”

“It’s
just stuff, Will,” Levi assured him, settling into the chair next to him. He
looked tired, but not as tired as Will felt. “I didn’t know… Jude didn’t
mention he’d stabbed him.”

“He
didn’t want to worry you, I guess. And really, we didn’t think it was that bad.
It looked like a surface cut to me. I thought maybe he slipped the blade when
he was putting it away, Jude didn’t even flinch when it happened. He’s tough
Levi. Tougher than you. Probably tougher than me. He kept it together while I
was freaking out. All I could think was to get him away from Jude and out of
our house.”

“Our
house? I love how Jude is first and their house is second.” Tracy set mugs on
the table and went to the fridge for cream.

“I
noticed that too,” Levi agreed, spooning sugar into his mug. His smile didn’t
quite reach his eyes. “I know what the two of you are doing. Stalling me isn’t
going to make it any easier.”

“Not
on you, but I wasn’t ready to hear you fly off the diva handle just yet,” Will
admitted. The coffee maker made the last chugging noises that said the brew was
almost ready, and not a moment too soon because Will needed the caffeine hit to
deal with his friend right now. “After coffee.”